by Layton Green
Mr. Sofistere looked furious and then thoughtful. He admitted he had only date-tested the false bottom of the letterbox, and not the lid, which gave some weight to the Druid’s story.
Lou scoffed and muttered something about agreeing with Asha.
When I woke the next morning, Asha was gone, and I didn’t see any of her things. I dressed and hurried downstairs. Asha and Mr. Sofistere were eating breakfast in the dining room, their suitcases on the floor beside them.
“We’re taking a private car to London this morning,” Asha said, “and then flying home. I was hoping you’d come with us.”
“What about Jake and Lou?”
“Given the new information,” Mr. Sofistere said, “Jake requested a few more days with the letterbox. Lou has decided to join him. I should get back to the shop. Asha and I can support them better from home, if anything new is uncovered.”
“Please come,” Asha said. “What if the man with the scar returns?”
“That wouldn’t be good for his health,” Jake said, strolling in carrying the letterbox.
I glanced at Asha, then down at the letterbox. I wasn’t finished with the quest, and I wasn’t about to suffer through a long trip home with Asha. “I’ll stick it out with Jake and Lou.”
Breakfast was awkward. When Asha and Mr. Sofistere rose to leave, I mumbled a rote goodbye. Asha hugged me tightly.
“Please be careful,” she whispered.
“Travel safe.”
After Asha and Mr. Sofistere left, I spent the afternoon by the fire. Her absence felt like a carousel without children, wooden animals traveling in an endless loop.
Jake came down for dinner. We ate in silence until Lou entered the dining area with the letterbox in hand, staring at it with a fascinated expression.
“Commie?” Jake asked.
Lou set the letterbox down. “You know the decorative markings on the lid? The one we’ve all seen a thousand times?”
“Yep.”
“They’re not decorative.”
“They’re not?” I said, peering at the lines of flowery etchings we’d assumed were merely ornamental. “Then what are they?”
“A language,” Lou said. “Very cleverly disguised.”
Jake gripped the table. “So what’s it say?”
“Let me try to explain.” Lou kicked his feet up. “Written language began, as far as we know, around 3200 B.C.E., in the city of Uruk in Mesopotamia. The language was called Sumerian and the writing system was dubbed Mesopotamian cuneiform. A derivative of Sumerian, a language called Akkadian, soon evolved. Akkadian is more complicated than Sumerian, because any given Akkadian cuneiform sign had various sound values based on both Akkadian and Sumerian meanings. It was a logosyllabic writing system with isolated instances of purely logographic writing.”
“Commie?”
“Yes?”
“We’re not linguists.”
Lou sighed as if carrying the weight of the world. “I’m trying to bring it down—fine. I’ll simplify even further. I began noticing patterns in the ‘decorations’ on the letterbox; patterns that I know signify grammatical structure and syntax and a host of other things indicative of the presence of a language. As I began trying to break down the symbols and find a pattern, I finally realized what I was looking at—it was Akkadian!”
Lou began talking faster. “Akkadian was based on a peculiar wedge-shaped cuneiform style that, when elongated and distorted, can look flowery. Imagine a very early form of cursive. I think the decoration on the letterbox is Akkadian, mixed in with some purely frivolous markings. I haven’t heard of this being done before with Akkadian, but writing is a communicative art, and stylistic liberties have always been taken.”
Lou’s new information, coupled with the tale we had heard from the Druid, caused a tingling to spread throughout my body. I clapped him on the shoulder. “Great work.”
“I’ll call Lucius in the morning,” Jake said, “but what’s the bottom line? What do the runes mean?”
“Since we’re in the middle of the moors,” Lou said, “and my resources are limited to pub menus, I can’t decode it yet. I’ve already sent inquiries to a few specialists in the time period.”
Jake sank into his seat. “Not bad, Commie,” he said grudgingly. “And it fits with what we know.”
“How’s that—” Lou began, then cut himself off and snapped his fingers. “Ziggurats were common in Mesopotamia.”
Jake tipped his hat.
“Why the odd step-like shape?” I asked.
“Ziggurats can be thought of as ancient religious escalators,” Jake said, “built to bring man closer to God. Unfortunately, ziggurats were prolific in that time period and in that part of the world, so it’s impossible to tell which one the map is supposed to represent. The pointy symbols are another story. I’ve got no idea what those signify, but we should be looking for an ancient ziggurat surrounded by spires or slender pillars.”
A silence descended, and I knew we were all wondering the same thing: what could long-dead Druid priests, the letterbox, and our disturbing experiences possibly have to do with ziggurats and an ancient Mesopotamian language?
-61-
After dinner, Lou asked me why I hadn’t left with Asha. I told them what had happened. Lou’s face wrinkled, and Jake squeezed my shoulder and fell silent, going to that place he went when I knew he was thinking about his wife.
When I returned to my room, I found a letter folded under my pillow. I got a surge of nervous adrenaline as I opened it.
Dearest Aidan,
Whether or not you read my journal—and I believe you that you didn’t—my state of mind since our discovery at the chateau does not even begin to encompass how I feel about you. I never understood the concept of a soulmate until I met you, and I can’t really comprehend that it might be over.
But I know that, at least in your eyes, it is. And I can’t blame you.
I saw a face last night, haunting my sleep. He came to me as my brother and when I went to embrace him, he stripped away his mask and an evil, grinning Druid was in his place. I screamed until I woke. Oh, how I hate them for what they did.
To have to deal with the loss of my brother as well as my ability to see into the beyond, or whatever accursed trick of fate was played on my young mind, was hard enough, but to have those losses affect my relationship with my parents and my sanity and my ability to feel, and to now ruin my relationship with you, is more than I can bear.
By the time you read this, I’ll be on my way to New Orleans to try to make sense of the things that have happened, if any can be made. I know you don’t want to hear this, but I can’t accept that everything can end like it did.
I know that’s a selfish thing to say.
Love always,
Asha
I stared numbly at the letter, and turned out the light.
Not used to sleeping without Asha, I slept in fits and starts. Every time I woke, I imagined someone staring at me outside the window.
Someone with a burn scar on the back of his hand, the bottom of his white robes floating in midair.
A ringing phone jolted me awake the next morning. It was Bobby Gravois, my private investigator.
“You sitting down, Bubba?” he said.
“Should I be?”
“Took me a while, but I found your guy. I’ve got a buddy in D.C., an old partner from N.O.P.D. who moved to the Feds a while back.”
I pressed the phone tighter. “How’d he find him?”
“I sent him a photo of Sofistere, and he cross-referenced a couple of international crime databases. Pegged him on Interpol’s facial recognition scanner.”
My face felt flushed. “He’s a criminal?”
“Not exactly. Your guy’s real name is Jurgen Krassnig.”
“He’s German?” I asked, with a hollow feeling at being deceived.
“Austrian. Born in Linz in 1950, degree in accounting, upper middle class. Mother was French, maiden name of Sofistere.
His pop was the criminal: a high-ranking Nazi suspected of a major looting in Belarus, though he was never prosecuted. Guess what he stole?”
I realized I was holding my breath. “What?”
“Jewish religious artifacts. Things like scrolls and thousand-year-old Torahs. Priceless relics. Jurgen’s mother died of cancer in ’81, and Pop kicked the bucket in ’82—the same year Jurgen Krassnig ceased to appear on the public record. Lucius Sofistere showed up in New Orleans a few months later, an independently wealthy man.”
“He got rich off his father’s Nazi loot,” I murmured. “His father must have sat on the money and willed it to him. So he’s not a wanted man?”
“Both Jurgen and Lucius have squeaky-clean records. We did find business connections to half of the shadiest tomb raiders and treasure hunters on the globe, but that’s no crime. Your guy scours the globe for his trinkets, and he’s good at it. Sticks to the countries where he won’t run afoul of the law.”
I ran a hand through my hair. I told him to research the name Nyles Kempthorne, warned him it could be a pseudonym, and said, “Did you find anything on Donn Enterprises?”
“Not a thing. If there’s a connection to your guy, it’s lost on me. Oh, and he has a good track record with charity. Gives away quite a lot of pieces to museums, foundations, churches.”
“Probably tax write-offs,” I muttered.
I hung up, wondering how much Asha knew.
Not that it would matter. I knew now that she had taken the job at Antiques and Objets d’Art because it afforded her exposure to a steady stream of religious objects from all over the world.
In her mind, the best way to try to recapture her lost ability.
The best way to reach her brother.
Jake spent the day puzzling over the last location on the map, while Lou worked to decipher the Akkadian text. I restlessly paced the inn, unable to stop thinking about the Druid’s story, wondering if we could trust him, checking the hands of everyone I saw for a burn scar.
I joined Jake for a quick dinner at the village’s lone cafe. We picked up sandwiches and sat on a bench behind the granite church that dominated the center of town, next to a cemetery built around a collection of standing stones. The circular arrangement of the dolmens reminded me of a much smaller Stonehenge, except the stones were rougher cut.
The ruggedly beautiful day, clear and bright, was a rarity. When Jake went back for more mustard, I tried to work the new information about Mr. Sofistere into the puzzle.
Try as I might, I couldn’t see how his secret impacted the search. It was frustrating, since I had harbored suspicions about his involvement.
If not him, then who?
I also thought about Asha, as I had for almost every waking moment. Knowing that nothing I could do would make her look at me in the way I wanted was the bitterest pill I had ever swallowed. To move on, I felt I would have to kill the best part of myself: the part of me that had loved her and that loved her still.
“Aidan,” a female voice said.
I jumped up, spun, and did a double-take. The blond woman Asha and I had seen at Notre Dame was walking towards me out of the cemetery, wearing the same white dress as Paris, despite the cold.
At first I wasn’t positive it was the same woman, but her smile of recognition and flashing green pendant erased any doubt. She walked right up to me, handsome and poised, blond curls spilling onto her chest. I was wary of a Druid trick, but saw no one else with her.
“What’re you doing here?” My question sounded ridiculous, even to myself.
“You still don’t know, do you?”
“What?”
“I have even less time than in Paris,” she said. “This place isn’t as strong, but you have to be warned.”
“Sorry? Warned about what?”
“What I told you about the last time,” she said, her attractive mouth curling in frustration. “Please get rid of it.”
“We’re not doing this again,” I said. “Especially if you can’t tell me who you are, what the letterbox is, or what the threat’s about.”
Her voice grew urgent. “If you insist on continuing, you should know there will be a choice. A final test. And you must—”
“Now that’s what I call gettin’ back on that horse, Counselor,” Jake said, walking up behind the woman.
At the sound of his voice, the woman stilled and looked ready to bolt, a doe caught in her hunter’s sights. Her eyes shifted left to right, but she wouldn’t turn to face him.
Jake stepped around to meet her. She tried to spin away, but he caught a glimpse of her face, and her reaction to his voice paled in comparison to his. Jake gave a strangled cry and sank to his knees, a single word reaching his lips.
“Vivian,” he whispered.
He reached his arms out to her in supplication, unrecognizable as the Jake I knew. He was a man resurrected, transformed in that very instant.
I didn’t need to ask how he knew her name. This was not some casual acquaintance or long-lost friend. This was, or Jake believed her to be, his wife. His dead wife. I knew it as certainly as I had known anything.
Jake was still on his knees. She moved to cup his face in her hands, but just before she touched him, a look of such anguish and regret crossed her face that I didn’t doubt my guess for a second.
Her whole body started to shimmer, and she backed away. Her lips formed words but she was unable to evoke a sound.
Jake stood, reaching for her as if underwater. She turned and ran into the cemetery. Before Jake could follow, or even take a step, she disappeared mid-stride, into thin air.
“No!” Jake cried. He ran to the spot where she had disappeared, his eyes sweeping across the tombstones. “Vivian! Vivian!”
He took a step in one direction, and then another, and then another. I could only watch in helpless frustration. I didn’t help him look because there was nowhere she could have gone.
Jake dropped to his knees and moaned. I put a hand on his shoulder, and he clutched it with an iron grip. “It was her,” he said. “I heard her voice in the ossuary but thought it was a dream. She started to warn me about a choice, and then I saw something black in the tunnel. A shadow. Then she was gone. Someone took her away from me again, Aidan.”
His voice shook and he paused to collect himself. “She’s still here, somehow. She must be trapped and needs my help—my God, Aidan, that was her.”
He stood and regained his composure, purpose replacing pain. “This is the girl you saw at Notre Dame?”
“Yes.”
“Was she wearing that emerald pendant?”
I nodded. “You recognize it?”
“I gave it to her as a wedding gift. I buried her with it.”
I could only stare at him in shock.
“Tell me about her,” he said greedily. “Tell me everything she said, every movement she made.”
Still unsure what to believe, I gave the drowning man his request, recounting everything I could about Vivian’s brief visits.
“What’s she warning us about?” he said. “Of what we’ll find? I wonder why she never told you her name. She must not have wanted to upset me. Something must—”
A look of horror crossed his face. “She’s in Hell,” he whispered. “I don’t know how she manages to appear sometimes, but that black thing drags her back.” His eyes flared like Roman candles. “There’s hope, Counselor. She knows something about this quest that someone doesn’t want her to talk about. The letterbox must be a way to help her!”
I said nothing. I didn’t want to point out that she had come to warn us.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
“Very,” I said.
Jake stood up straight, taller than I had ever seen him. “Whatever it is,” he said, “it involves that box. I swear to you, nothing on this earth or anywhere else, not the Devil himself, will stop me from discovering its secrets. Get ready to gear up, Counselor. We’re finishing this.”
-62-
“Hi, guys,” Asha said.
We returned her greeting. As I stared at the phone, I had the comforting feeling that she was in the room with me. I pushed it away, annoyed.
“What’s going on?” Jake said roughly, talking over his emotions.
“Lou, why don’t you begin with what you discovered?” Mr. Sofistere said.
“The good news,” Lou said, “is that I’ve deciphered the individual characters of the Akkadian inscriptions.”
Jake stepped forward, hands clenched.
“I’ll show you as soon as you give me back the letterbox. Why’d you take it, anyway? You know I’ve been studying it.”
Jake pulled the letterbox out of the backpack. “Because it doesn’t leave my sight.”
His eyes met mine. He had taken it with us to dinner, and left it with me when he ran back for mustard.
Lou took the letterbox. “As I was saying. There are two parts to this: first, the Akkadian script hidden within the decorative border. Unfortunately, it isn’t straightforward. Worked into the characters are a collection of cuneiform numbers and . . . symbols . . . for lack of a better way to describe them. It almost looks like some sort of formula. I’m looking into the possibilities; it might be astronomical or mathematical calculations, a primitive form of longitudinal and latitudinal coordinates, I just don’t know.”
“That’s not what I wanted to hear,” Jake said. “And the second?”
“The second is the larger rune on the side of the letterbox, the same one on Perrott’s card. Like the flowery writing, it confused me because it’s not etched in typical cuneiform script. But I’m told it’s definitely an artful collection of Akkadian characters—a word—perhaps adapted from an original writing.”